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Daily Archives: August 24, 2012

Here’s an interesting one: the Bloomberg administration apparently could not get the city council to pass the taxi cab reform legislation it desired, so it went straight to the state legislature to pass the law implementing its proposed reforms. The legislation was then challenged as an unconstitutional regulation of “local” affairs under the New York Constitution’s Home Rule clause, in part because the New York City Council never sent a “home rule message” – a request that the state legislature pass a law regarding a local matter – to the state legislature. Somewhat ironically, the city law department argued that the state law was not an unconstitutional infringement on local power, whereas the opponents of the law (the taxicab industry and others) argued that it was. Judge Arthur F. Engoron, of the New York Supreme Court, in a colorful opinion, invalidated the law.